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Mars Science Laboratory Instruments: MARDI

Next up in my series of posts about the instruments on MSL is the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI).

It would appear that Opportunity has stumbled upon another meteorite

I wonder if this came from the same original body as Block Island, or if Meridiani is the kind of slowly deflating landscape that accumulates meteorites at its surface, like the ANSMET meteorite hunting spots in Antarctica?

Mars Science Laboratory Instruments: MAHLI

Last time, I talked about the MastCam color cameras on MSL, so it only makes sense to continue with one of the other cameras: The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).

Opportunity on the move

Opportunity rover is driving, driving, driving. It departed the meteorite named Block Island on sol 2,004 and has routinely clocked 70 meters per driving day (with drives every other day).

Beautiful 3D animation of Spirit's environs in Gusev Crater

Doug Ellison has done it again: he's created a spectacular overflight of Gusev crater based upon digital elevation models of the terrain produced by the United States Geological Survey from HiRISE data.

Computer models of the two MastCam cameras

Mars Science Laboratory Instruments: Mastcam

A few weeks ago I gave a lunch talk at Cornell summarizing the MSL mission and particularly the instruments that it will carry and was shocked by the number of people who showed up!

Opportunity's highway, and a tour of Block Island

Just a cool image to start the morning: after a 70-meter drive yesterday, Opportunity's following not one but two sets of its own tracks.

Los Alamos

Greetings from Los Alamos New Mexico!

Spirit at Home Plate, July 16, 2009 (sol 1,968)

New HiRISE image of Spirit at Home Plate

There's a lovely new color HiRISE image of Spirit at Home Plate. It was captured on July 16 (sol 1,968), and Spirit is firmly entrenched at Troy, on the western side of Home Plate.

Shadows brighten and darken with the dust storm

Dust storm update: Skies clearing for Spirit

For a while, Mars was beating Spirit while she was down, throwing a dust storm at the rover where it's bogged up to its hubcaps in fluffy soil When lots of dust is lofted into the sky, the hazard is that when it comes down, it may come down on the rover and its solar panels. But it appears things on Spirit are still pretty clean.

Exploring Mars on Earth: The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition

High in the Arctic, just below Earth's north polar ice cap, biologists, geologists, and engineers come together in Svalbard every August to practice and prepare for an expedition to Mars.

Happy 3rd anniversary of the Spirit landing!

A sunset into the dust

While Spirit has been stuck at Troy, it's been taking numerous opportunities to capture photos with dramatic twilight lighting. On sol 2,002 (three sols ago, or August 21), it gazed toward the setting Sun, snapping the shutter roughly once a minute.

Opportunity from HiRISE, sol 1,949 (July 19, 2009)

New image of Opportunity on Mars

I really can't explain why it didn't occur to me to search for the rover in the image of Victoria crater released by the HiRISE team on Wednesday.

Oblique view of Victoria crater from HiRISE

Mars eye candy: New oblique view of Victoria crater

Today the HiRISE team released a lovely new view of Victoria crater, taken nearly a year after the Opportunity rover departed it.

Reports from the 2009 AMASE Field Expedition

Now that it's high summer in the Arctic, it's time for research expeditions to swarm northward to explore icy landscapes as analogues to Mars and other far-off places.